“Don’t You Care” (The Buckinghams)

We’re starting off a week of horn rock tunes with your classic horn rock song of the day, “Don’t You Care” by the Buckinghams. This tune, released in March of 1967, didn’t sound like the psychedelic rock and sunshine pop on the charts at the time, which may have helped it cut through the clutter on the airwaves. It spent 14 weeks on the charts, peaking at #6 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100.

Horn rock was commonly known as jazz rock, which is different from jazz fusion, as practiced by jazzers like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report right around the same time jazz rock was flourishing. Where jazz fusion infused jazz with a rock beat, jazz rock infused rock with jazz horns. (So one is jazzers playing at rock and the other is rockers playing at jazz.) Basically, jazz rock is a rock rhythm section (guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums) mixed with a jazz horn section (more often than not a trumpet, a sax, and a trombone, although Blood, Sweat & Tears mixed it up with two trumpets, sax, and bone, and Chase had four trumpets and no other horns, but you get the idea) with rock vocals on top. That jazz rock sound was a fairly big thing back in the late ’60s and early ’70s but had pretty much faded away by the middle of that decade. (And, yes, I know Chicago still continues to this day, but they abandoned their jazz roots in favor of mushy elevator music by 1974’s Chicago VII.)

The first jazz rock band, to my ears, was a group not often associated with that sound. They were, however, the group—with their producer— that started it all, sort of. Here’s how the story goes…

The Buckinghams were a band that had been kicking around Chicago (the city, not the group) for a year or so before they were introduced to a cat named James William Guercio in late 1966. Guercio had been the bassist and road manager for Chad and Jeremy and was now working as a staff producer for Columbia Records. He signed on as the Buckinghams’ manager and pushed the band to add studio horns to their otherwise typical British Invasion-inspired five-piece sound. The result was a string of Top 40 hits, including “Kind of a Drag” (#1 in 1966), “Mercy Mercy Mercy” (#5 in 1967), “Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)” (#12 in 1967), and “Susan” (#11 in 1967). “Don’t You Care” was their second big hit, after “Kind of a Drag” and before “Mercy Mercy Mercy.”

All of these tunes have a definite proto-jazz rock flavor, mixed with sunny sixties harmonies. But the real link to the jazz rock sound was Guercio, who went on to manage and/or produce early records for Chicago (then known as the Chicago Transit Authority) and Blood, Sweat & Tears—both definitely jazz rockers.

“Don’t You Care” was written by Gary Beisbier and Jim Holvay, who wrote most of the Buckinghams’ hits. They were members of a Chicago-based group called The MOB, who were pretty much an R&B show band. I guess you could call The MOB the progenitors of the jazz rock sound, as they were essentially a rock/R&B band with horns. While they didn’t have any hits of their own, they definitely were an influence on Mr. Guerico, who tapped their two songwriters to write material for the Buckinghams.

As to the Buckinghams, they broke up in 1970 but re-formed in 1980 and have been touring on the oldies circuit since then. The current group includes original members Carl Giammarese and Nick Fortuna, along with a bunch of ringers, which is common these days.

But here’s where it all began, kiddos. If you like Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears, it all started here!